New CEO Nadella Seeks to Remake Company; Layoffs Primarily Among Phone and Tablet Staff, Which Bulged After Nokia Buy

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Satya Nadella recently pledged to be "bold and ambitious" to remake the company and its culture. The first task, he signaled in a memo on Thursday, would be cleaning up some of his predecessors' messes.

The recently named Microsoft chief is cutting up to 18,000 jobs in the next year, or about 14% of the company's workforce, the largest layoffs in its history. About two-thirds of the cuts...